The United States of America versus Illegal Migration: Separating Truths from Lies

President Trump’s objection to illegal migration has been well known since he declared his candidacy on June 16, 2015. His insistence on securing the borders prior to deciding the fate of the illegal migrants has generated a hysterically emotional, in reality idiotic, reaction from his opponents.

Steering the debate away from rationality and reason has necessarily resulted in cynical disregard of facts and truths under the banner of destroying the very fabric of the constitutional order of the United States of America. In order to restore sanity and unmask the lies of the advocates of lawlessness and anarchy, eight truths must be stated unequivocally.

First, who are these people? Overwhelmingly, they are men of all ages, who left their countries or places of their habitual residencies to find better lives in an economically more prosperous state. For all legal and practical purposes they are migrants. Consequently, they can by no means be subject to the protection of any international convention, protocol, or multilateral treaty.

Second, Article 14, paragraph 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was adopted in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly, guarantees the right of refugees to seek asylum in countries other than the one they have fled from. This general declaration was elaborated on in the Convention concerning the Status of Refugees in 1951, in Geneva, Switzerland, and its Optional Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees of 1967. Several other regional declarations and charters on human rights and peoples’ rights were promulgated too until now. The United States of America did sign the Optional Protocol, which grandfathered in the Geneva Convention of 1951. According to Article 1, paragraph A, point 2 of the Geneva Convention, a refugee is an individual who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such event, is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”

Third, refugee status can only be bestowed upon the individual by the competent state authorities where he or she requests asylum. Thus the refugee is only entitled to seek asylum. He or she does not have the right to asylum. Consequently, the United States of America has the right to grant asylum, but it does not have any mandatory obligation under any bilateral or multilateral agreement to automatically extend such recognition to anybody.

Fourth, no convention or protocol mandates that the United States must provide entry to anybody to its territory. To wit, in case of illegal entry, the United States has the right to deny, stay or to accept the individual’s request for asylum. Such an individual will have to go through the legal process. If denied asylum, the individual will either leave voluntarily or be deported to a third country. In this latter case, the principle of non-refoulement (i.e. the principle that refugees or asylum seekers should not be forced to return to a country where they are liable to be subjected to persecution) must be applied.

Fifth, economic hardship or any other grounds not covered by international agreements do not entitle anybody to obtain asylum in another country. To summarize, the legal institution of asylum is not an entitlement either by international law or by domestic legislation and jurisprudence.

Sixth, to claim on the one hand that illegal migrants deserve the legal, economic, moral, and emotional sympathy of the United States of America, while simultaneously branding opponents of illegal migration racists, only shows the glaring racism of proponents of illegal migration. Availing of the argument that the countries from which the migrants came are living hells only shows the utter elitist disdain for the less developed countries. Adding insult to injury, these elitists implicitly also state that these countries are hopeless and never be able to reach the level of the developed countries.

Seventh, the proponents of illegal migration totally disregard their fellow citizens situation, whose lives are being upended by the arrival of millions of strangers, mostly with little education, poor language skills, and not even a rudimentary knowledge of the culture, the laws, and the customs of the American people.

Eighth, the financial and economic burdens of the individual citizen, the local and state governments, and the federal government are tremendous. Adding to all this are the high crime rate and the activities of organized criminal gangs that poison the bodies and the souls of susceptible young Americans.

In conclusion, most Americans acknowledge that they individually and society collectively have a moral duty to assist the less fortunates. However, the federal government’s, the state governments’, and the local jurisdictions’ primary responsibilities are to their citizens, to the memory of the founding fathers, and to the yet to be born Americans. All these governments that have been created “of the people, by the people, for the people” are obligated to preserve the American republic for posterity. This sacred duty is also a universal moral imperative. For maintaining the continuity of the American way of life and protecting freedom, democracy, and the rule of law, will benefit in the long run all the peoples across the globe.

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Frontiers of Freedom, founded in 1995 by U.S. Senator Malcolm Wallop, is an educational foundation whose mission is to promote the principles of individual freedom, peace through strength, limited government, ...